


Made Almost Entirely of Downside

by APgeeksout



Category: NXT, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: M/M, Soul Bond, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-07 17:30:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5464931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It took them both an embarrassingly long time to work out what had happened. Ring chemistry was way more common than bonding, after all. Spend that much time in the car, driving through the emptiest stretches of Alberta with someone, and there's not much else to do but get to know each other practically inside-out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Made Almost Entirely of Downside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mithen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/gifts).



It took them both an embarrassingly long time to work out what had happened. Ring chemistry was way more common than bonding, after all. Spend that much time in the car, driving through the emptiest stretches of Alberta with someone, and there's not much else to do but get to know each other practically inside-out.

Nobody at the wrestling schools ever mentioned – in between demonstrating how to take a bump, or naming names on the promoters who'd been known to try to screw young talent out of their pay – how careful you should be picking your travel partner, how you should make sure you could live with their nerves buzzing in the back of your brain right alongside your own, their excitement knocking your heart into double-time.

Still, Sami figured he'd lucked out; he probably wouldn't have chosen to bond at all, if there'd been any choice to make, but it could have been way worse.

“If things work out the way they're supposed to, we're going to be linked together forever anyway.” He'd shrugged, trying, pointlessly, to seem less wigged-out than he was. “This just makes it a little more literal, right?”

“Right.” Kevin agreed slowly, and the thrum of his own quiet freak-out reverberated through Sami like a steady bass line.

 

 

It'd been weird, but not always bad-weird.  Sometimes kind of nice, even.  They'd tried to make a go of being together as more-than-tag-team-partners, too, and it had worked.  Beautifully. For a little while.

For one thing, sex with a bonded partner was pretty incredible; every touch echoing and amplified between them, a feedback loop of pleasure that left them both breathless and buzzing and satisfied. Though it wasn't just that; when the night had gone their way - when one of them had gotten the pin or forced the tap - it was glorious: satisfaction doubled and reflected back, lifting them up and carrying them along so they could make the next town and make sure no one would forget their names.

But then, there were the other nights, when things hadn't broken their way: frustration and disappointment, doubt and anger and hurt and pity, and a dozen other feelings nobody wants to broadcast blasting off them both like so much shrapnel, ricocheting between them and leaving behind little slices that bled and festered right along with their visible cuts and scrapes.

It happened so gradually that Sami didn't see it until he looked back on it later, alone.  The bad nights steadily outnumbering the good. Souring everything so that it was hard to remember how easy it had been to be happy together in the beginning.

The blow from the chair, when it finally came, was almost a relief. For the both of them.

 

 

“Hey, so, can I ask you something?”

They were somewhere in North Carolina, and Bayley was sitting shotgun, stocking feet propped on the dash, eyes hidden behind the heart-shaped sunglasses she'd picked up at a gas station a couple of states back. “I mean, don't feel like you have to answer. I don't want to make things weird for the next six-something hours.”

“Try me.” Sami smiled and took one hand from the wheel, adjusting his own shades – yellow and orange and shaped like the squiggly-edged sun of a kid's drawing – to shoot her a quick glance over the frames. “I'm an open book.”

She laughed a little, still sounding a hesitant.  “Okay.  What does it feel like? Being bonded?” she asked. “I've always wondered, but I don't really know anyone else who is, and I never know if it's rude to ask.”

“Nah, you're okay,” he said. “It's all over the internet, right? Open secret.”

Really, if it had been anyone else asking, he'd probably have dodged the question. Bonding wasn't that much rarer than having red hair, was probably more common than not being able to roll your tongue or tasting nothing but soap out of cilantro, but people who didn't have the predisposition (or did, but, through luck and careful planning, had managed to avoid spending enough time with any other susceptible person to let the bond form) had such weird ideas about it. And such little shame about asking invasive questions, especially when they knew who you were bonded with and had already decided what they thought it meant.

But this was _Bayley_ , his friend, who approached the world with open arms and endless kindness.  Bayley, whose heel, in its ladybug-patterned sock, jogged against the dash in what he figured was anxiety that she might be hurting him somehow just by asking, so instead of blowing her off, he tried to find the words to make it make sense to her.

“You know how it is sometimes, when you get in the ring with somebody and everything just _clicks_?”

“Yeah; that's the schweetest!”

He glanced away from the road again and found her smiling softly toward the horizon. He wondered which opponent she was thinking of, and knew suddenly what they'd talk about to fill the next hundred miles.

“When it's working out, it's kind of like that, except, everywhere. All the time. Being just that little bit more in sync than everybody else.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “You guys were tag partners, right?”

“Off and on. Opponents sometimes, too.”

“I guess that gave you an edge?”

“Probably. I mean, you get to know anybody you're in the ring with a lot, but this is, like, next level stuff." He adjusted his glasses, feeling fidgety, and wondered suddenly if Kevin, wherever he was, could still feel it. "Tore a lot of houses down, me and Kev.”

She put a hand on his arm, gave him a little squeeze, like she thought he needed consoling. Maybe he did.

 

 

They'd gone years without seeing each other.  After so long apart, the bond faded, taking some of the hurt along with it.

 _Faded_ didn't mean _disappeared_ , of course; the big stuff still cut through the time and miles between them.  He'd known when Kevin's daughter was born, the spike of joy that pierced him bright and overwhelming and just like it'd been when her brother entered the world.  They'd talked on the phone for the first time in years on the night of Dad's heart attack scare; Kevin, kept awake by Sami's gnawing fear, finally calling and eventually leaving him in badly-suppressed, slightly-hysterical giggles at four a.m..    

 

 

When Kevin signed, Sami felt a deep pull of satisfaction - the same one Kevin admitted later that he'd felt when it happened for Sami.  

Between one thing and another - Sami being preoccupied with Adrian, Kevin working out the logistics of bringing the family to Orlando - they didn't actually get to see each other until the night of Takeover.  The handshake-turned-hug they shared in the locker room  was awkward.  They both felt it, uncertainty pinging back and forth between them, nerves preying on them both.  But, they were together again, and things were about to get good for both of them; Sami felt that, too.  He was going to learn what the belt felt like around his waist.  He was going to recover that good, early balance he'd had with Kevin at the start.

Before any of that, though, he was going to get this crowd on their feet and give them all kinds of reasons to cheer. 

His music hit, and he danced out from gorilla and into the night that was all his, if only he could finally take it.  


End file.
